Telecommunications (telecom) systems are carrying increasing amounts of information, both in long distance networks as well as in metropolitan and local area networks. At present, data traffic is growing much faster than voice traffic, and includes high bandwidth video signals. In addition to the requirement for equipment to carry increasing amounts of telecom traffic there is a need to bring this information from the long distance networks to businesses and to locations where it can be distributed to residences over access networks.
The equipment which has been developed to carry large amounts of telecom traffic includes fiber optic transport equipment which can carry high speed telecom traffic. The data rates on fiber optic systems can range from millions of bits per second (Mb/s) to billions of bits per second (Gb/s). In addition, multiple wavelengths of light can be carried on an optical fiber using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) techniques.
The ability to carry large amounts of telecom traffic on an optical fiber solves the long-distance point-to-point transport problem, but does not address the issue of how to add and remove traffic from the high-speed data stream. Equipment for adding and removing traffic has been developed and is referred to as “add-drop” multiplexers (ADMs).
Traditional designs for ADMs are based on the use of multiple interface cards which receive high-speed data streams, create a time division multiplex signal containing the multiple data streams, and route the time division multiplex signal to a cross-connect unit which can disassemble the data streams, remove or insert particular data streams, and send the signal to another interface card for transmission back into the networks. By aggregating the multiple data streams into a time division multiplexed data signal, the data rate of the time division multiplexed signal is by definition several times the rate of the maximum data rate supported by the interface cards. Traditional ADMs have proven adequate for interface data rates in the range of 155 Mb/s to 622 Mb/s.
However, optical signals of at least 2.4 Gb/s have become standard, and traditional ADMs do not work for these high-speed optical signals. That is, numerous problems arise due to the timing associated with the multiplexing and transmission of the high-speed signals between the interface cards and the cross-connect unit. Thus, there is a need for cross-connect equipment which can support multiple high speed data streams (i.e., at least 2.4 Gb/s).
Standardized interfaces and transmission hierarchies for telecom signals have been developed and include Pleisochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH), Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) standards, and Synchronous Optical Network (SONET). In addition to these telecom transport standards, standards have been developed for interconnecting businesses and computers within businesses. These Metropolitan and Local Area Network (MAN/LAN) standards include Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, Frame Relay, and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI). Other standards, such as Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) have been developed for use at both levels.
Individual pieces of equipment can be purchased to support telecom or MAN/LAN standards. However, these devices generally either connect data streams using a signal protocol or convert entire data streams from one protocol to another. Thus, there is a need for a device which can establish interconnectivity between interfaces at the MAN/LAN level, while providing cross-connection to interfaces at the telecom network level.
Multiple interfaces are presently supported in cross-connect equipment using different interface cards. High-speed interface cards must be inserted into particular slots in order to insure that the high-speed signals can be transported to and from the cross-connect unit and to and from the high-speed interface cards. It would be desirable to have a cross-connect system in which all cards can support high-speed optical signals of at least 2.4 Gb/s, regardless of the card slot they are located in. Moreover, it would also be useful to have a system which would support routing, bridging, and concentration functions within MANs/LANs, as well as permitting access to telecom networks.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a flexible cross-connect apparatus that includes a data plane and can support multiple high-speed optical interfaces in any card slot. Furthermore, the flexible cross-connect apparatus can establish connectivity between data cards and the telecom networks.